National

NEW YORK (AP) — Justin Verlander figured time had run out on his chance to become the first starting pitcher in a quarter-century to be voted Most Valuable Player.
Last Tuesday, he found out about 12:40 p.m. that he was a unanimous winner of the AL Cy Young Award.
It was closing in on 1 p.m. Monday, and he still hadn’t gotten word on the MVP.
“I had told myself that it wasn’t going to happen,” he said. “I figured somebody else got the call.”
Not to worry, there was just a slight delay because Verlander didn’t give the Baseball Writers’ Association of America his telephone number, forcing the BBWAA to relay the news through Brian Britten, the Detroit Tigers’ director of media relations.

STILLWATER, Okla. (AP) — Oklahoma State University women's basketball coach Kurt Budke and assistant coach Miranda Serna were killed when the single-engine plane they were riding in during a recruiting trip crashed near a wildlife management area in central Arkansas.

The university said the pair died in the crash Thursday night near Perryville, about 45 miles west of Little Rock. The Winona Wildlife Management Area is in steep terrain in the eastern Ouachita Mountains. A cause of the crash was not announced.

In January 2001, 10 men affiliated with the university's men's basketball team died in a Colorado plane crash.

BEAUFORT, S.C. (AP) — Long before he became Smokin’ Joe, the future heavyweight champion was known in his South Carolina hometown as “Billy Boy” — a stocky farmer’s son who honed his devastating left hook on a punching bag made from a flour sack stuffed with corn cobs and rags.
Joe Frazier would make Philadelphia his adopted home, but his roots ran deep in South Carolina where he was born in 1944. More than 250 people gathered Wednesday for a memorial service near his hometown of Beaufort.
“He was Joe Frazier to the world, but he was our Uncle Billy,” said Dannette Frazier, one of about a dozen of Frazier’s nieces and nephews who still live near the 10-acre farm where the boxer was raised.

STATE COLLEGE, Pa. (AP) — The Nebraska and Penn State players gathered at midfield before the game, kneeling together for a long moment in a quiet stadium.
Sometimes, the most powerful statements are the simplest.
Saturday’s game was a combination of pep rally, cleansing and tribute for a Penn State community rocked by the child sex-abuse scandal involving former assistant Jerry Sandusky that cost Joe Paterno his job.
“We’ve had better weeks in our lives, obviously,” Jay Paterno, the quarterbacks coach, said after the game. “The world’s kind of turned upside down, but I think our kids were resilient.”

STATE COLLEGE, Pa. (AP) — After nearly a half-century on the job, Joe Paterno says he is still getting used to the idea of not being Penn State’s football coach. So is the rest of the shaken campus, after one of the most tumultuous days in its history.
In less than 24 hours Wednesday, the winningest coach in major college football announced his retirement at the end of the season — then was abruptly fired by the board of trustees.

NEW YORK (AP) — NBA players made it clear Tuesday: No deal.
No fear of Commissioner David Stern’s ultimatum, either.
“The current offer on the table from the NBA is one that we cannot accept,” players’ association president Derek Fisher said.
Instead, the players said they will ask for another meeting with owners before Stern’s Wednesday afternoon deadline — and sound willing to agree to a 50-50 split of revenues under the right circumstances.
In an interview on NBA TV, Stern said that whether he agrees to meet “would be guided by the labor relations committee.”
NBA spokesman Mike Bass said the league has not yet heard from Hunter.

STATE COLLEGE, Pa. (AP) — Joe Paterno, the Penn State football coach who preached success with honor for half a century but whose legend was shattered by a child sex abuse scandal, said Wednesday he will retire at the end of this season.
Paterno said he was “absolutely devastated” by the case, in which his one-time heir apparent, Jerry Sandusky, has been charged with molesting eight boys over 15 years, including at the Penn State football complex.
He said he hoped the team could finish its season with “dignity and determination.”
The trustees could still force him to leave immediately and could take action against university president, Graham Spanier.

STATE COLLEGE, Pa. (AP) — Penn State football coach Joe Paterno will retire at the end of the season, his long and illustrious career brought down because he failed to do all he could about an allegation of child sex abuse against a former assistant.

"This is a tragedy," Paterno said in a statement Wednesday. "It is one of the great sorrows of my life. With the benefit of hindsight, I wish I had done more."